In Part 2 of this series, I reviewed a number of web-based services and concluded that Bloglines would be my own choice - that’s the account I would keep. But it’s been quite a few days since I logged in there because I’ve been looking at other products. If I were to log in today I’d find that the information I prized so highly isn’t there for me. Much of what Bloglines would currently show as fresh content is actually material I’ve already read and I’d have to take some time to get back in synch with the thing.

Some software applications are useful to a degree that’s directly proportional to the user’s commitment to them. If you want to get the most out of them, you need to keep them up to date. If that’s true of the web-based services, it’s even moreso with the class of products I’m discussing in this post: stand-alone aggregators. These are programs which you download and install on your own system. And as the standards, and the types of things available in an RSS feed, change and evolve you can expect to have to upgrade the reader which means more downloading and installing. Since these products feel like more of a commitment than a web-based service, there should be some payoff to make it all worthwhile.

Previously I suggested that these programs could be expected to offer more control, a more sophisticated user interface and the ability to store feeds locally to allow reading offline. Some of the stand-alone readers have additional features such as the ability to integrate with the blogging process and to set up custom feeds, such as searches on a specific search term. (One product called these �€œPerches�€� and came with pre-installed examples that included a watch on news regarding a Mickey Mantle rookie card. As if I have that kind of money.) But to be truly useful, these programs have to handle the core functions well enough to make a user ready to commit. That’s what I’m looking at here.

There were two products whose names surfaced in either Kevin’s research or my own that I dropped from consideration pretty quickly. When I noticed that the last revision of AmphetaDesk dated back to Oct., 2002 my first thought was to wonder whether it would support the Atom format used by a large number of Blogspot blogs. It doesn’t and that’s as far I went with it. Another reader called Jyte came with a pretty minimal set of features. I dropped it when I realized that its built-in reader only provided an excerpt of an article even if the feed provided the whole post. Where’s the advantage to storing the feed on my own system if I still can’t read it all?

The rest of the applications discussed here share some common features. All support importing and exporting feed lists and auto-discovery. All use the same basic screen layout (though one allows you to change that): a narrow column on the left, which I usually refer to as the sidebar, contains the list of feeds with the rest of the screen divided horizontally, titles of the items in the selected feed on top and the bottom serving as the viewer for reading the items. All use some visual method to allow you to quickly identify feeds with fresh content. All of these products allow you to control how long individual feeds are stored locally either by specifying the number of items or a duration, e.g. 1 week, 1 month, etc., or both. And all of them provide a quick way to launch either the feeding site’s front page or the individual post in your default browser by way of context menu options. Three of them render HTML in their viewers while online and all three of those failed to display Haloscan comment and trackback links in some cases - that’s why I make a point of mentioning quick access to your default browser.

BottomFeeder is an open source product that’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It has one nice feature that I’d like to see in more applications of all kinds: you can get the latest program updates from within the program. BottomFeeder makes no attempt to replace your browser �€“ the viewer is controlled by selecting from one among a small collection of style sheets provided, but this is essentially a plain text viewer even when online. There are additional features here, including the ability to set up custom feeds based on searches through google and a few other search engine/news sites as well as a plugin designed for bloggers (which I confess I didn’t explore). It also allows for synchronization with other copies of BottomFeeder, making it equipped for network use. I’d call this a serviceable product with some higher end features.

I should mention in passing that there’s another open source reader called Pears that runs on all three platforms. It requires a recent version of both Python and wxPython. And with that I’m out of options for the Mac �€“ if there are other free applications for that platform that include the ability to read offline, I’m not aware of them. And the only other Linux alternative I can point you to is Liferea. The next three products discussed are all Windows applications.

Awasu offers three products: Personal Edition, Advanced Edition and Professional Edition. Only the first of these is free and, as you might expect, there are limits placed on it to provide an incentive to upgrade. The two most notable of these are an upper limit of 100 subscriptions and an update frequency limit of an hour where the Professional Edition will update feeds as frequently as every five minutes. (A full comparison of the three products can be viewed here.) Awasu has paid a lot of attention to both appearance and configurability, even in the free version that I looked at. Menus and tool bars can be customized, and hints and helpful dialogs can be turned on and off. This program handles offline reading in a manner different from all but one of the other programs discussed here. It displays the feed in blog format with the newest item at the top and I found this really convenient for offline reading. When online, you can view the individual post or the site’s front page in the viewer rendered as Internet Explorer would. The developers have also included a plugin architecture and some plugins are available for download at Awasu’s website. This might provide some higher end features down the road. And Awasu includes the ability to search the feed contents and set up the results as a custom feed. That seems to be the limit for custom feeds here, though.

The next two products both require Microsoft’s .NET framework, a code library that MS built to make the development of web-based applications easier. I was going to give these a pass since I’ve never run into a need for .NET myself, but I learned recently that MS included .NET as an option in Windows XP Service Pack 1. That means there will be an increasing number of home users who can run programs that require it. So I overcame my Microsoft paranoia, downloaded and installed the .NET runtime and then took a look at two aggregators that have been well-reviewed.

SharpReader has the more minimal feature set of the two. It provided good feedback on the status of my feeds, showing the number of unread items versus the total number of items currently stored for the feed like so: (15/20). Its offline reader displayed content one article at a time as did most of the readers I’ve seen. Unsurprisingly since it’s taking advantage of a Microsoft code library, when online it can bring the post or site into its viewer rendered as Internet Explorer would.

Sauce Reader, free for personal use, is a more fully-featured product. It shows the status of your feeds as SharpReader did. It makes much better use of the Windows environment by using menu options and toolbars to provide access to its features. Its offline viewer was the only one I saw that provided a choice between showing one article at a time, as most of these products do, or in blog format as Awasu did. And like BottomFeeder, it provided a collection of style sheets to control the offline viewer’s display. When online, it renders HTML as SharpReader did but also provides a browser toolbar that allows you to follow links and easily find your way back, and generally browse the ‘net without leaving the reader. No bookmarks, though, so it’s not a complete replacement for Firefox (or your weapon of choice). There’s a provision here for searching your feeds but no allowance for custom feeds that I could see. There’s a provision for posting to a blog from within the product and a quick look at the setup for it had me wondering if I should explore this. It makes support for the most popular blogging applications really obvious.

Since there are a number of commercial entries in this product class, and since NewzCrawler offers a free trial version (as does FeedDemon) I took a look for the sake of comparison. Take the standard layout and features mentioned above, add a generous chunk (though not all) of Awasu’s configurability and full-featured user interface without the limits placed on the Personal Edition and throw in HTML rendering online in a window that includes a browser toolbar similar to Sauce Reader’s, and you’ve just about got it. You get extra features for your money, such as the ability to have a news ticker or crawl across the bottom of your screen (personally I hate that) or the ability to �€œmake a newspaper�€� which opens a window with headlines from various popular news sources. You can search your feeds, call your email client from within the reader if you see something that might interest someone else, and compose and publish blog posts from within the reader.

If you’re already a commited user of RSS and you’re pining for the bells and whistles and extra features, then NewzCrawler or other commercial viewers might be worth a good look. But if you’re just curious and want to explore the possibilities without spending any money, then the free products provide plenty of functionality to get you started. For Windows users in particular, if you can live with the limits on Awasu’s Personal Edition, it makes a nice reader if you don’t have .NET and don’t want to bother with it. If you do have .NET, or don’t mind the 22 MB download involved in getting it, then Sauce Reader is a great place to start. And don’t forget that all of these support OPML which means you can export your feed list to another product if the need arises.

The final installment will discuss some products that use software you already have to deliver content: either your browser or your email client. And then I’ll attempt to sum up once I get over the dizziness I’m feeling from jumping in and out of all these different programs. See you later in the week.